The Children's Story
by Sarah the nerd
Summary: Alec William Pond is about to discover that the bedtime stories his parents told so well were true.
1. Prologue

**The Children's Story**  
_Prologue_

There are many kinds of bedtime stories, and every parent tells them differently.

Some of them repeat one much-loved story, and others tell a different one each night. Some of them begin their tale with _once upon a time_, even though it was actually upon someone else's time. And sometimes the cautious parent will set aside the monsters, because childhood is hard enough already...or sometimes they will bring them out, because children, in general, are brave. And sometimes they're funny and sometimes they're sad and sometimes they're scary.

And sometimes they're true.

The children, boys of seven and three, jumped on the beds and clamoured for their favourites.

"I wanna hear about the Doctor and the vampires!" the oldest yelled loudest. "Tell me, Mummy, Daddy!"

Mummy sat on the bed, and Daddy set the youngest child on his lap, and the story began and the children cheered at parts- the storm, the kiss, the win!- and hid behind their pillows at others. And when it was over the oldest boy said, "Mummy, did that really happen?"

And Mummy and Daddy looked at each other, and Daddy said, "No, son, it's just a fairytale."

"There's no fairies!" the youngest boy said. "Not a fairytale, Daddy!"

Mummy and Daddy looked at each other again, and there was a look in their eyes that both boys saw but didn't understand.

"Boys," Mummy said, "tomorrow Aunt Sharon and...a lady are coming round. They just want to see you. So you need to be on your best behaviour, understand?"

Both boys nodded, despite not quite understanding. They understood the tone in her voice, but they were children, and despite the worried looks in their parents eyes, they simply did not believe yet that bad things happened to _them_.

"Goodnight," Mummy said. "We love you both-"

And then she turned off the light. And outside the room she sank to the floor, and Daddy did too, and they waited until the children fell asleep and stared at them and their handmade toys and their new school uniforms and the uncracked wall for a very, very long time.


	2. The Witch's Son

**The Children's Story**  
_1. The Witch's Son_

It was the middle of autumn, just after school has restarted and Christmas is a long way off and leaves and rain turn to sludge on the pavements.

Alec William Pond entered the room and threw his schoolbooks on the floor.

"Alec," Mum said. "Don't."

Crossly, Alec picked up his books and flung them on the nearest flat surface. Then he sank onto the sofa, pulled out a games console, and sat with his back to his mother, even though she was watching him with expectation in her eyes.

"Are you going to tell me, Alec?"

"No," he muttered, digging himself into the sofa.

"It's those boys, isn't it? Stupid Christian and chubby Ben and the ugly one with the silly hair."

"Mum!" said Alec. He was pleased, of course, but embarassed, for his mother made such statements all the time and in public. About people he went to school with! "You want to scare them, don't you? They're not scared of you."

"Every kid in the village is scared of me," Mum said, proudly. "Well, little Garry Angelo hasn't stolen from the corner shop again, has he?"

"No."

"And Keely Francis hasn't thrown stones at an old lady's puppy? Or an old lady? Patrick Jenkins hasn't taken somebody's dinner money? Robert Watson hasn't smashed up the park?"

"No." Everyone in town, children and adults, looked at Amy Pond with a sort of awe, and Alec did as well. Most children reached their teens, at least, before discovering that their mother was never _just _their mother- she had her own childhood, her own dreams and her own secrets. But Alec Pond had always known, from the moment he could talk, his mother was Amy and her secrets could fill a book.

Dad, on the other hand, was justDad- solid, dependable, loving. He was walking through the door with Alec's little brother in tow.

"How'd it go, Johnny?" Mum asked the nine-year-old, crossing the room.

"I scored a goal!" said Johnny. He was covered in mud, and treading it into the house. "I nearly scored two, I would have done but Jim West tackled me and I fell over and..."

Dad grinned and ruffled his hair and turned to Alec. "Are you okay?"

"It's those boys," Mum said. "They're still bullying-"

"Don't say bullying," Alec found himself saying. "It's not bullying, that's where they punch you and stick your head in the toilet, this is just..."

"What have they been doing?" Dad said, frowning. "They're still at it? Even though your mother went right to Christian Miller's house?"

Alec nodded. "That always makes it worse. I tried to tell you..."

"Time to talk to the teachers, now," Mum said, eyes flickering just a little, almost smiling as well. "We'll bring the kids in, make them think we're gonna kick them out, watch _them _cry-"

"Fifteen years," said Dad, "and you're still a very, very disturbing woman."

Mum just laughed.

"Don't talk to them," Alec said. "They'll know it was me. _Then _they'll bully."

"Well," Dad said, "at least consider at, Alec, we can't ignore this."

"Cake!" shouted Johnny from the kitchen. "Mum there's cake! You made cake! _Cake_!"

"After-dinner cake," Mum shouted.

"Awwww."

"I'll manage it," Alec said. "They just call me names, I can put up with that."

He went back to his games and tuned out his father's talk. It wasn't just him being called names- they had names for Mum as well. The flipside of people being scared of you was that people were _scared of you_. She's a nutter, they said. She had an imaginary friend who she actually believed existed, who she built a shrine to. She used to disappear for weeks. She used to see therapists and fly into rages, hit people, bite people! She's a _witch_, one overenthuastic little girl had suggested.

They could have hit him, it probably wouldn't have hurt so much...

The evening dragged on, Alec had dinner and after-dinner cake, and watched TV and went to bed.

"We think we might have another word with Christian's mother," Dad said as he switched off the landing lights. "What d'ya think?"

Alec just shrugged.

As darkness crept into his bedroom he thought about bedtime stories. His parents had so many. They told them like they'd been there- the statues that moved when you didn't look at them, the vampires in old Italy, the soldier who guarded his true love for two centuries (Dad told it as if the soldier had been a close friend, now gone) the goings-on in Utah, the tale of River Song, the Daleks and the Doctor.

He was in all the stories, the Doctor. When Alec had first asked who he was, Mum had said, "My imaginary friend," and smiled sadly. And when Johnny had first asked if he was real, Dad had said "If you believe in him, he is." A line parents often used, Alec knew, but Dad had _meant _it somehow.

Alec dozed off. Outside, a blue box slid into being...

...and out again.

A man's voice howled "Bugger!"...

And then it was quiet.

* * *

Two days later, a Thursday, Alec sat on the playground wall drawing. Christian Miller came up behind him and snatched away his pen.

"I need that," Alec said.

Christian threw it to the other side of the playground, where it rolled under a dustbin. Then Ben and Claude were there as well, appearing seemingly from nowhere like the stone angels Mum talked about, that moved when you weren't looking.

"I gotta secret about your mum," Christian said.

"What's that?"

"She's, like, an unfit mother!" Christian said, eyes glinting with malice but probably not understanding the enormity of what he was saying. "My mum was talking to Sharon Mason yesterday. She said _loads_ of things about your mum. That she believes in imaginary friends, that she's totally crazy. She thinks you and your brother should be taken away from her."

Alec Pond froze. So the thing he'd once heard his parents whisper about had happened. Aunt Sharon had made her move.

Christian and the other two ran away, the damage done. Alec stayed where he was. Then he started walking home.

* * *

He burst in on Mum cooking.

"Alec!" she said. She put the bowl down and went to him. "Why aren't you at school?"

"Is it true about Aunt Sharon?"

Mum looked at him, and a different expression came over her face, one Alec had hardly ever seen: fear. "You don't want to listen to what those boys are saying..."

"Is it true? Does she think...?" He didn't want to say the actual words, _you're an unfit mother_. Because it would be a lie and it hurt.

"She..." Mum looked at the ground. "She...was at my wedding. She saw things. Things that she didn't believe in. And she didn't want to accept that, and she blamed me, yeah?"

Alec was confused. "What things?"

Mum raised a hand to her long red hair and ran her hand through it, and then she said...

"Oh, Alec, sweetheart...we didn't want to tell you, not until you were older. But you're old enough now, you both are. And it's time you knew the truth."


	3. The Two Blue Boxes

**The Children's Story**  
_2. The Two Blue Boxes_

Alec and Mum and Dad and Johnny sat in the middle of the room.

"Boys," Mum said, holding Johnny, "parents shouldn't keep secrets from their children. We had a good reason, but we shouldn't have done it." And Dad nodded.

"What secrets?" Alec asked.

Mum looked at them both and said, "The Doctor's not a story."

Alec went through this in his head, every bedtime story, every significant look that passed between his parents...

"He's a real person?"

"Yes," Mum said. "And we'll prove it." She swallowed. The fearful expression was back. "Boys. You musn't tell anybody, especially not Aunt Sharon, that you know about this. I'm sorry to put this on you, but...you have to know. And you're old enough now."

Both boys nodded.

"Okay," Mum said. And she looked at Dad and took his hand. "When I was a little girl I had a imaginary friend. But he wasn't. He was real. And he came back for me eventually, took me away on the TARDIS, his spaceship. We went through time and space. And he came back for your dad too and he joined us. We did so much. Every one of those stories we told you was true."

Johnny was staring in amazement. "Even the one with the vampires?"

"Yes, even that one." Dad said. Alec's mind spun. "But eventually we left the TARDIS, left him." Alec wondered what sort of story was behind that. "We came back here and we wanted children. We wanted to raise you believing that the world was full of...magic. Because it is. But we couldn't tell you about the Doctor and what he did, we couldn't tell you the truth, because..."

"Because of Aunt Sharon," Mum said. "She raised me, you see..."

Johnny raised a hand.

"You don't have to do that, Johnny," Mum said, smiling a little. "What is it?"

"Why did Aunt Sharon raise you? What about Granny and Grandpa?"

"Oh," Mum said. "Oh, of course. It's hard to explain, sweetie, but both of them raised me."

Johnny obviously didn't understand, but he nodded.

"A lot of these things we'll explain in more detail later," Dad said. "Anyway. After we came back, Sharon started...kicking up a fuss. She knew the Doctor was real, but she didn't want to believe it, because it would have messed up her world. You get people like that. But for ages she told Amy...told your mother she was insane and not fit to raise kids. She wanted both of you...taken off us." And he had the same fear in his eyes Mum had had. "Do you remember when you were little, a lady came to the house? She was a social worker, checking things were okay. Anyway, we eventually made Aunt Sharon back off, and things went back to normal. But now her mind's changed again, I suppose, she's desperate to..." He trailed off and Johnny started crying.

"I don't wanna leave! I don't wanna leave you!"

"Shhh, shh," Mum said, holding him tight. "You won't. We won't let you go." And she nodded at Dad. Dad stood, and took a key from his pocket, and unlocked the cupboard next to the toy cupboard. A cupboard Alec and Johnny had never seen inside, had been told contained only boring household junk.

He took out a blue box.

"This is it," he said. "We wouldn't expect you to believe in the Doctor without proof."

Alec and John looked into the box. There were photographs, papers, a DVD, a bow tie...

"That's one of his," Mum said. "He had a few of them. Gave us one to keep..."

Alec looked at the photos. They were of Mum and Dad's wedding- there was Mum in the background- and showed a man. He was all dressed up in a suit and looked...normal. But at the same time utterly out of place.

"That's him?"

"Yeah," said Dad. "That's him."

Johnny looked. "I like him! He's got a hat!"

"What's on the DVD?" Alec asked.

Dad plucked it from the box and put it in the player. (Alec had always wondered why they had a DVD player when everyone else had long since gotten rid of theirs). He pressed play, and a well-dressed red-haired woman appeared on screen.

"Who's that?" Alec asked.

"Harriet Jones. Former Prime Minister." Mum said. "What are they teaching you at school?"

"Ladies and gentlemen, this crisis is unique," Harriet Jones said. "And I'm afraid to say it might get much worse."

"Christmas day, 2006." Dad filled in.

"I would ask you all to remain calm," the Prime Minister said. "But I have one request. Doctor, if you're out there, we need you."

"She knew him?" Johnny gasped.

"Everyone in power did, back then," Dad said.

"I don't know what to do. But if you can hear me, Doctor...if anyone knows the Doctor, if anyone can find him..."

The image flickered and changed then. It was the wedding again, and the Doctor was dancing with a woman.

"That's Aunt Sharon!" Johnny yelled.

"Yeah," said Mum. "It is."

"She met him?" Alec said, stunned. "She doesn't believe in him but she met him?"

"Yeah," Mum said. "That's right."

All four of them watched the screen.

"So you're the Doctor," Sharon said to him. "You really exist."

"I do," the Doctor said. But Aunt Sharon was frowning and looking right through him.

"Prove it," she said.

"Eh?"

"Prove you're actually him. You could be an actor she paid!"

"Um...Sharon, is it?" the Doctor said. And suddenly he seemed rather cold and unforgiving. "You saw my time machine materialize. I dunno about you, but that's quite...proof-y."

"Could have been a trick." Sharon said.

"Well, anything I show you could be a trick."

Sharon glared at him. "She said you were an alien."

"I am an alien."

"Prove _that_!"

"I don't think that's a good idea."

"Why not?"

"Because I'd have to go in your mind."

"Then do it. You have my permission!"

"No," said the Doctor. And he turned away, but Sharon grabbed his arm.

"My niece went mad because of you. Because...you left her in the dark alone one night, didn't you? You made promises you couldn't keep. And I had to try and help that little girl and I failed! So show me what you really are!"

The Doctor sighed. As he did that, he looked like a different person, and Alec saw the alien. "Okay." And he took off his gloves. "I'll just scrape the surface. Okay? And I'm sorry about anything you see..." He placed his hands on each side of Sharon's face, closed his eyes. She jumped a little, and closed her own eyes.

Silence, all around Alec and his family in the room. On the tape music blared in the background, a tinny love song. And then...

"Sharon," the Doctor said urgently, and the tape crackled. "The door you see. Don't go through it."

"What will I find?" she asked.

"No!" the Doctor said, and he let go and dropped his hands, but Sharon still had her hands on him, and she seemed frozen in place...

The Doctor pulled her hands away.

"You silly girl," he said coldly. "You shouldn't have looked."

Aunt Sharon stared into his eyes.

"Oh." she said. "You _are_. Alien." And her breath came in gasps. "The thing that kills monsters. The thing that takes children. The thing that took Amy!"

"No, Sharon," said the Doctor, but she wasn't having it. She moved away and was swallowed up in the dancing crowds, without looking back, without saying a word.

The person holding the camera turned it round. It was Mum, and she looked deliriously happy.

"Now, that was a bit weird," she said. "Blimey, he freaked out Aunt Sharon!"

And then the video ended.

Mum took it out of the player. "Boys. Something else. Sharon's wanted to get hold of this DVD for ages, yeah? She wants to destroy it, because it's not going to exactly help her case if it turns out she _met _the bloke she claims I invented andactually, you know, admitted he was an alien. She managed to convince a lot of people he was an actor, some boyfriend of mine I'd paid. She took some old diary entries of mine from ages ago and kept copies of them, kinda twisted all the words...she managed to convince a lot of people I really was crazy. Unstable. _Unfit_." And she swallowed and Dad put his arm around her.

"Okay," Alec said. He looked down into the blue box. "I'll never tell her."

"I won't either," Johnny said. Then he asked the thing Alec hadn't asked. "Mum, what did the diary say?"

Mum twisted her hands. And looked at Dad. And back at the boys. "Alec, John...sometimes you have to...fight to get what you want, okay?. When I had Alec, when he was a baby, it was difficult, because...having a baby can affect your mind a little, you see. Which is no-one's fault, but it happened, and I survived it and decided to fight for the family I wanted. And I had you, Johnny, and the same thing happened and I wasn't quite right for a while. The diary entries, they're from around those times."

They all were silent. Alec realised he actually understood, understood perfectly- he even knew the name of the condition: postpartum depression, he had leant about it in class, and he wasn't angry but very sad. He didn't want to think about it, didn't want to go back that far, so he reached into the box and pulled out another photograph. "It's...is that...?"

"That's the TARDIS," Mum said. "The time machine. Remember? The time machine shaped like a 1960s police box. Bigger on the inside, so many rooms."

Johnny looked amazed, and Alec had to pull the photo away from him so he could see. He stared at the picture for a long time, puzzling it out, looking at the blue doors and wondering what his parents had found behind them...

"There's one other thing," Dad said.

"What's that?" Alec asked.

"Come outside."

* * *

All four of them went outside to the back garden. And Alec noticed it right away...

On the grass there was a marking, a sort of shadow, box-shaped. As if something shaped exactly like a 1960s police box had landed there recently and then left again.

"What is it?" Johnny asked, wrapping his coat around himself.

"We think the TARDIS was here," Mum said. "Which was another good reason to tell you boys the truth." She shivered, but Alec thought it was little to do with the cold. She wore a funny expression- delighted, excited, fearful.

They all stared at the mark on the ground.

"Why would he come here?" Johnny asked.

Neither Mum nor Dad spoke, so Alec did. "Maybe he wants to see us! Mum, Dad, you're his friends!" He trailed off as he realised how big a thing that actually was. "Why wouldn't he want to see you? Us?"

"Because...well...he doesn't always like to return to old friends," Dad said, when Mum didn't. "He just...moves onward. Makes new friends, and leaves the old ones. It's just how he's wired." And he sighed.

Mum looked to the stars. And then back to her sons.

"If there's ever...trouble, anywhere on this Earth, he'll be there," she said. "But there hasn't been anything like that. And he just goes where the trouble is..." And she trailed off. And Dad looked at her.

"Let's go in," he said. "It's cold."


	4. One Last Crack

**The Children's Story**  
_3. One Last Crack_

The next day Alec was sick. It was all the excitement, he knew, the thrill of learning the secret, of learning so _much_ so fast. He supposed he'd bottled it up somehow, like when he'd been to see a horror film with Dad and had been perfectly fine throughout, then sick in the car on the way back. You get it from your mother, Dad had said once, she kept the bad things in...

Mum and Dad let him stay off school, of course, and Mum went off to her office and Dad to the hospital. Alec was trusted to stay at home, in bed, and he did. At around lunchtime he heard his dad come in.

"You alright, Alec?" he called.

"Yeah," Alec called back.

"If you want any food, there's plenty in the cupboard, ok?"

"I'm not hungry. Okay."

Alec lay back in his bed and tried to read a book, but he realised after a few minutes that he _was_ quite hungry. He put on a dressing gown and went downstairs...and heard Dad's raised voice, and another voice, a woman.

It was Sharon, in the kitchen.

"She needs help," Sharon said. "Amy needs to be put away. Not permenantly, Rory, she can still have a life, she needs _help_."

"I didn't invite you in," Dad said angrily. "You need to leave."

"I've tried everything," Sharon said. "I thought I'd have one last crack at you. Amelia's deluded. She believes in impossible things. What sort of life are Alec and John going to have if she teaches them there's...there's_ monsters under the bed?_"

"Those impossible things," Dad snapped, "you've _seen _them! You were at the wedding, Sharon. You let the Doctor right into your mind! How can you be doing this?"

"It was just tricks," Sharon said. "He was an _actor_, it was done with mirrors and special effects. And I'm not going to sit by and watch two innocent kids get caught up in their mother's delusions."

"_Leave_," said Dad.

"Rory," Aunt Sharon said, "can't you see, you'll _hurt _them."

"You're the one doing that," Dad said. His mouth was set in a hard line and his fists were clenched. Alec had never, ever seen him that angry. "Sharon. Listen. This is a loving family- you've never had one, maybe you don't get it. Me and Amy love our kids more than anything. We'd happily fight and _die _for them. Understand?"

"I understand," Sharon said. She was wearing an expression of kindly, patronizing sympathy and Alec suddenly realised, with horror, that he hated her. He had never hated before and it was a terrible feeling: the only thing he could compare it to was when he was playing a video game, and it was a really difficult bit where you fought a fire-breathing monster and he tried over and over again and finally gave up and threw the controls against the wall in a sudden burst of rage and broke them, and Dad shouted at him. He had felt terrible, and now it was much worse.

"If you change your mind you know where I am." Sharon said.

She let herself out. Dad sat at the kitchen table, put his head in his hands for a couple of seconds, and then looked up and saw Alec.

"Oh. Alec!" He stood up and ran to him. "I'm sorry you had to see that."

Alec just nodded. It was only just beginning to really get to him, that he might be _taken away_. That he might have to leave Mum and Dad, maybe Johnny too, leave his bedroom and his X-Box and his laptop and his art set with the fifty different colours (he was thinking of tiny and irrelevent things now, but somehow they still seemed to matter), leave his _whole life_.

He started to cry.

"Hey, hey..." Dad said. He held him tightly. "Alec, she's not going to succeed. I promise. You're staying with us."

"Uh-huh," said Alec, still crying and feeling like a little kid.

"I _promise_," Dad said again, and Alec chose to believe him. He let go and swiped his face with his sleeve.

"I think I'll have something to eat..."

"You do that," Dad said. "I'll make you your favourite. Beans on toast."

* * *

One week later and Mum and Dad were both sat at the breakfast table when Alec and Johnny came downstairs, something that rarely happened as both had jobs, and everything was silent as the children took their places.

"Sharon is sending a social worker in," Dad said. "Things have been talked over, we're under observation now, but that's it."

"Daddy..." said Johnny.

"You're not going anywhere," Dad said firmly. "Any idiot could see we're a loving family, alright? Everything's going to be fine."

Alec nodded, although that was more for Johnny's sake than his, and his mother offered up a gloomy sort of smile.

"Everything's going to be fine," she said. "No. Honestly. It is."

* * *

_Sometimes you have to fight to get what you want..._

When Alec got back from school the house was empty. Mum was working, Johnny and Dad were at football practice again. They'd be back soon, but for now everything felt quiet, and sort of _bad_...

Alec thought about his mother's diary, as he had been doing for the past week. He felt terrible to think of it, his mother suffering because of _him_. Except not because of him, but it was still sort of his doing. And in the back of his mind he wondered if he'd been an easy baby, his first memory was of jumping in the deep end of a swimming pool, terrifying Mum and Dad as the lifeguard dragged him out...had he been a crying child, keeping them awake, shredding their nerves and igniting their tempers?

He wanted to look for the diary. He just wanted to know. If he'd been a bad child. If he could put right what he might have put wrong.

_The diary entries, they're from around those times..._

He wanted to understand, and wanted to _help._

He turned on the television so the house didn't seem so quiet, and walked across the carpet to the cupboard where the blue box was kept. He opened it, moved the box, nothing.

In truth he thought it was probably in the attic, hidden away. So it was the attic he ventured into, torch in hand, and he went through every box- through his and Johnnys old baby clothes, Dads old nurses scrubs, old comics and magazines

Downstairs the front door unlocked, and he heard Dad, and Johnny, and Mum.

"Alec, you up there?" Mum called up the stairs, the ladder to the attic hidden from her view.

"Yeah," he called back, hoping she wouldn't come up to see him. "Yeah, just in my room."

As he spoke those words he saw a little book in the corner of a box, a pink book with AMY written on the front. Without allowing himself to consider the implications of what he was doing, he opened it to the first day.

_Back _was all it said.

He turned the page and kept reading. And he felt so guilty, and wanted to put it down, but he couldn't-

_Not used to it, not used to love without fear. I used to think I loved the Doctor, but I decided I didn't after all. Had a fling, had half a fling, had something, grew up next day. But didn't, maybe, didn't..._

Alec's heart pounded, but the next pages, he knew upon seeing them, were the reason the diary had been locked away. Written in pink, dated to the year of Alec's birth-

_Once upon a time there was a girl, and she was young and silly and probably a bit stupid, killed her baby to save her husband. Didn't know she was doing it, but she did, and she didn't really do it but she DID._

The tiniest crack opened in Alec Pond's heart.

_She could do anything, saved her husband from death again without even knowing she did it, rewrote the whole universe, saved her parents, saved her best friend, her best friend who saved all worlds..._

_Killed her baby to save her husband, didn't deserve another..._

Alec put it down, hands shaking.

_Killed her baby..._

He sat there for a while, not moving. He could hear voices downstairs- Johnny and Dad were playing video games, Mum would be cooking. She loved to cook, to come up with weird food, to mix everything up. Something from the Doctor? It had always been something from the Doctor. And she'd had a fling with him, and she'd, and she'd...

He picked up the diary.

He went downstairs and past the living room, past Dad and Johnny, to the kitchen. Mum was cooking, like he'd expected. She looked up and smiled at him, and it faded when she noticed the look on his face, and he put the little book on the kitchen table and said in a frightened voice-

"Did you do that?"

And pointed to the words in pink on the page.

Mum moved forward slowly, like she was facing one of the monsters she'd woven into a bedtime story, and picked up the yellowing pages.

"Oh," she said softly.

"Mum, you have to tell me. Did you..."

"No!" she said, voice raised just a little, hand covering the papers. "Alec, sweety, sit down."

Alec did.

"When we were..." she began. Then she stopped. "Once, me and your dad...we were sort of dragged into our dreams. That's the important bit, okay, we made our own decisions but we made them in a _dream_."

Alec nodded.

"And...there was this man, not the Doctor, a bad man. He gave us two worlds and made us choose, made me choose, between the world where I married your father and lived here, or the world where your father and me kept travelling in the TARDIS. Your father's world, or the Doctor's. In one world I was pregnant, in the other I wasn't."

"And I was the baby," Alec said, not whispering, trying to sound grown up, "I was your baby."

"No!" Mum said. "No, you're my baby _now_, you weren't then."

"What happened?" Alec asked. "What happened to the baby?"

"Your father..." Mum trailed off. "I saw him die, right in front of me. And I had to choose a world, and I chose the one with _him_ in it, understand? But to do that I had to die, and I was mad with grief, I didn't think. I didn't think about the baby. And then it all faded away like a dream..."

Alec kept listening.

"I woke up and I had everything, I had my boyfriend and my best friend and the whole world. And I never thought about it much again, that baby, until I had a _real _child."

"Which was me."

"Yes. I had you and I didnt think I deserved you. How could I when Id done something so _horrible_?" And she clenched her hands into fists and pulled herself up onto the worktop, which seemed like the action of a much younger woman. "I sort of..." And she trailed off.

Alec looked at her and tried to imagine it -Dad dead, Mum sobbing, and the whole house seemed to come down. He wondered where the Doctor had been.

Mum stayed where she was, the food forgotten, and she stared at her son with such hopeful eyes. Alec considered the fling (the affair?) and decided it should wait until later.

"I'm sorry," Mum said.

"Why?" Alec asked.

"For not telling you."

Alec just nodded. He didn't know what to say. It felt a little like he'd just found out he'd been meant to have an older sibling, except they'd died in childbirth, and his parents had kept quiet because the grief was too great.

"Alec," Mum said, "Are you okay?" She said it in a sad and nervous tone.

"Yeah," Alec said. "Yeah, I'm fine."

Dad came in, a worried expression on his face. Some sort of parent sixth-sense had led him to the kitchen, and Mum gave him an I'll-tell-you-later look.

"I'm just finishing dinner," she said to Johnny, who was entering the room behind Dad. "Want to lay the table, sweety?"

Johnny looked at them all, trying to decide if what was going on was anything to worry about, and then nodded and went through to the kitchen.

Dad picked up some plates. "Come along, Alec," he said kindly. "It's Italian night, you don't want to miss it." He put a hand on his shoulder, and the whole family gathered in the dining room, Mum wiping the sadness from her face and telling Johnny what she'd added to the lasange to make it extra special...looking at them all, smiling...

There was a noise.

They all heard it at the same time. It filled the room and echoed around-

"That's the TARDIS," Mum whispered.

Alec said nothing, Johnny gave a little gasp.

Dad looked at Mum.

"Quick!" he said, and each parent took a child's hand, and they ran outside, bursting out of the front door and onto the grass, seeing it, seeing _him_-

"Ponds!" the Doctor yelled. "Lovely to see you!"


	5. World In A Box

**The Children's Story**  
_4. World In A Box_

Mum reached him first.

"Doctor!" she screamed, and crushed him into a hug. "Doctor! These are my boys!"

The Doctor hugged her back, grinning widly and then grabbing Dad and drawing him in too. "Amy! Rory! How _brilliant_ is this! And look!" He let them go and turned to Alec and Johnny. "Look! Little Rorys! Tiny little- aw, this is fantastic!" He hugged them too. "Just wonderful! I love it when this happens, I love it!" He let them go. "By the way, you're all in danger."

The celebration stopped.

"Doctor." Dad said wearily.

"What is it?" Mum demanded, reaching an arm out to him. "Doctor! What kind of danger?"

"Oh, not instant danger," the Doctor said. "No, no, no, more like possible danger. No, wait-" He thought things over. "_Perfectly safe_ danger. Shall we go inside?" And he strolled up the pathway like it was his own. Mum and Dad watched him, hands clasped-

"Doctor!" Mum said.

The Doctor turned around. "What?"

Mum gestured to Alec and Johnny. "Doctor. This is Alec and this is Johnny. Well, John. These are our children."

"Oh," the Doctor said. "Oh. Good names."

"Yeah." Mum said.

"Yeah." the Doctor said.

They went inside.

* * *

They sat at the dinner table and the Doctor helped himself to the lasagne.

"Amy! You cook?"

"I like making unusual food," Mum said. "Wonder where that came from."

The Doctor grinned. "So! What are you two up to now?"

"Doctor," Dad said, "shouldn't we talk about, you know, the danger?"

"Oh, it can wait. I just met you again! I've been trying to get here for _ages_, might be something a bit wrong with the TARDIS, old girl's been through a lot lately..." He trailed off. "What do you do now, Mr Pond?"

Dad frowned, but answered. "Head nurse at Leadworth general."

"Excellent! Amy?"

"I have a charity," Mum said, with a proud smile despite her uneasiness. "We send books out to children in poor countries, teach them to read. I set it up myself..."

"What's it called?"

"The Fairytale Foundation."

The Doctor gave a smile.

"The danger," Mum said pointedly.

"Oh, all right," the Doctor said. "There's a man who's vowed to hunt down all my friends and kill them."

Johnny froze in the act of chewing his food, and Mum and Dad stared, appalled.

"That's really serious!" Dad yelled. "Damn you, you're so _casual _about this sort of thing!"

The Doctor barely reacted to Dad's anger, just looked at them all. "Been in touch with everyone I can find. Martha, Mickey, Sarah, Jo, Jack- not that it matters to him- Liz, Tegan..." Alec and Johnny stared open-mouthed as he rettled off a huge list of names. "I left you two until last. Well, you're sort of..." But he didn't finish the sentence. Instead he turned to Alec and Johnny.

"You've got Rory's eyes, Alec! And Johnny has Amy's eyes _and_ a massive nose! Isn't human reproduction brilliant?"

"What were you going to say just now?" Alec asked, but the Doctor ignored that and said excitedly, "Come and see the TARDIS! I bet your mum and dad told you everything, but it's not like seeing it! Come on!"

"We thought you were a story," Johnny said, still in total awe.

"Until about a week ago," Alec added.

"Oh," said the Doctor. He looked at Mum and Dad curiously, and Mum said, "We'll explain why later. They know the truth now."

The Doctor frowned, just a bit.

"Go and see the TARDIS," Mum said.

"Yes!" Johnny squeaked excitedly. "I want to see the TARDIS!"

"Come along," the Doctor said.

* * *

As they crossed the garden Alec worried about his parents. Right now Mum was probably filling Dad in on the secret diary Alec had now read, and both would be going over the danger in their minds, wondering what the Doctor had brought crashing down...

The Doctor flung open the doors of the police box. Alec and Johnny peered in, not daring to actually go inside just yet, and even though they knew what to expect, it dazzled them.

"It is bigger on the inside!" Johnny yelled. And out of instinct he turned and yelled, "Mummy!" But she was, of course, not there, and Alec suddenly felt oddly nervous, left alone with this superbeing. He took Johnny's hand.

"Well?" the Doctor said. "Get on in!"

They did.

Mum had talked about it so much. A world in a box, she said. And Dad had talked of oranges and greens, staircases that led to great ceilings, pools of water lit by lights...

Johnny squealed loudly and ran to the central console. Alec stayed rooted to the spot, taking it all in- and Dad walked through the door behind him.

"Johnny!" he yelled. "Don't touch anything!"

Johnny jumped back in surprise, and the Doctor picked him up and handed him over to Dad, who was hurrying two steps at a time up the stairs.

"Why the shouting, Mr Pond?" he asked, although he sounded like he knew the answer.

"What if he'd touched something?" Dad asked, putting Johnny down. "Doctor, he could hit one button on this thing and be...and be blown into World War Four! You _know_ that! You shouldn't let them near it!"

"I was watching," the Doctor said, and Alec was surprised because for some reason he'd expected him to yell. "Where's your missus?"

Alec took Johnny's hand again and drifted into the corner, looking at things, pretending he wasn't listening.

"Thought I was being overprotective," Dad said.

"Rory," the Doctor said, more thoughfully than anything, "don't you trust me?"

"With my life," said Dad. "But not with my children."

"Fair enough."

Mum came through the door. Alec saw his father hurriedly hide what might have been a look of triumph. "Amy!" he said.

"Everything okay in here?" she asked, in a deceptively light tone.

"Fine," the Doctor said. And things were quiet for a couple of seconds, and he twiddled a lever on the console. "So! Where would you like to go?"

"We're not going anywhere!" said Dad, and Mum looked...sad...for just a moment before she nodded. Then she checked to be sure Alec and John weren't listening, even though Alec was. "Doctor," she said firmly. "perhaps _now_ you might want to tell us about this man who wants to kill all your friends?"

"Oh yeah," said the Doctor. "Bloke called Peter. Don't know his last name, never thought to ask. Wants revenge on me..."

"And your friends," Dad said.

"Yep. He's one of those men who..." He finished there. "Anyway. A empty threat. No-one's been hurt, killed or anything of the sort, he's not from your era, and he has no technology or weapons of any kind."

Mum frowned. "Still _sounds_ like a threat."

"We have children," Dad said, in a voice so low Alec hardly heard.

"And they will be fine," the Doctor said firmly.

"What did you do?" Mum asked. "To make this bloke hate you?"

"I took his girlfriend in the TARDIS, and she died."

There was a long silence. Johnny climbed up on a chair.

"You did what?" Dad finally said.

"She died," the Doctor said. "Angela. Lovely girl. Barely got to know her." He trailed off. "She made one mistake, got too close to the monster. And she had a boyfriend, you see, he seemed to really love her, and he was there when she died...saw it happen."

Mum and Dad were silent, touching hands, and Alec thought they were thinking of long-ago events.

"He was so angry," the Doctor said. "It was her who wanted to come with me, she wanted the adventure and he was the careful one. And one misstep, one change of heart, one turning back to save someone and she was dead."

Mum and Dad looked at each other. Alec didn't understand the look. He cleared his throat to let them know he was listening.

"Knew you were listening," the Doctor said. He got up and went to him, picking up Johnny along the way. "He told me I was going to suffer the way he suffered. Threw grief and threw cliches at me."

"And when was this?" asked Dad

"It was far off in the future, Rory, 2080. And you're...well...not to upset you or anything, but you'll probably be dead by then. And Peter can't leave his own time. He's not me. You're safe, you're always gonna be safe."

Mum stared at him thoughtfully and changed the subject.

"How's River?" she asked.

"River is River," he said, not meeting her eyes. "It's been interesting times."

There was silence.

"I need the toilet," Johnny said.

Dad got up from where he sat. "Come on, then." He took Johnny's hand, and looked expectantly at Alec. And at Mum, and then at the Doctor. "Doctor, we can't come with you."

"No," said Mum. "No." She said it as if her mind was made up, and she took Alec's hand, but he was too old for that and pulled it away.

The Doctor smiled sadly.


	6. Meddler

**The Children's Story**  
_5. Meddler_

The five of them went outside, and Alec worried, because the real world looked _less _now.

"I can't come with you, either," said the Doctor.

"We have a spare room," Dad said.

"Stay for a few days?" Mum asked.

The Doctor shook his head. And turned, but then-

"Oh," he said. "The story thing? You told Alec and Johnny I was a story? Why?"

Alec opened his mouth, then closed it when Mum started talking.

"It was Aunt Sharon," she said. "Doctor, she told me I was crazy."

The Doctor started laughing.

"Crazy! Fairytale Amy, crazy?" And then he stopped laughing. "_Of course_ you're crazy, in the best and most brilliant way. Oh, Amy!"

"She wanted to take the children away," Mum said simply, and the Doctor stopped laughing.

"Oh," he said. "_Oh_. Always forget how humans are." Those words sent a shiver down Alec's spine, a _you're-too-young-too-understand _sort of shiver. "I looked into her mind, you know," the Doctor continued. Mum and Dad were silent. "So...I think I'll nip over and have a word with her."

"We'll come with you," said Dad.

And Alec heard it first, a twig cracking, something coming. And he was pretty sure he'd been expecting it, there were _always _monsters in the stories.

"Mum," he said. "Dad."

"Doctor," said Mum, "you might make things worse."

"What is it, Alec?" Dad asked.

A man stepped out of the dark.

Johnny gave a little shriek and everyone turned around. An ordinary man in ordinary clothes stood there in their front garden, eyes full of malice, triumphant smile-

"Oh, Peter," said the Doctor sadly. "Choose your moments, don't you?"

"Who are you?" squeaked Johnny, but Dad, who stood nearest, pulled Johnny behind him.

Everyone waited to see what was going to happen, without really knowing they were doing it, and Peter said, "Hi."

"Hi," said the Doctor, calm and collected. "Tell me, Peter, tell me how you got here."

"You'll find out soon enough."

Mum and Dad were slowly backing away, shielding Alec and Johnny.

"Go home, Peter," the Doctor said, "Go home, go down the pub, have your life, die _old _and remembering, don't come back to me."

Peter didn't move. He seemed to be thinking it over, and Alec took the opportunity to get a good look at him. He was carrying something in his right hand...

"These are your favourites, in a way, aren't they?" said Peter thoughtfully. "A _family_. Doing ordinary things to save the world, two good parents raising two good kids. Never in danger, never afraid, just what you wanted for them."

"Peter," said the Doctor, "think very hard about what you're doing here." And Alec remembered one of the stories, the story of the Doctor and River and the prison-box, and how the Doctor had talked to his enemies then, threatened them, and it hadn't worked. It wasn't working now...

"Bless their little lives, they mean so much to you," Peter said quietly. "You'll never understand, Doctor, I'm not doing this stuff for _me_, it's not just because I'm angry, it's because you keep taking people and making them fight and die for _you_! You've left a trail of damaged soliders in your wake, and you have no idea how dangerous you are to everyone you meet!"

Out of the corner of his eye, Alec saw the Doctor and Dad exchange a look.

"Doctor," said Peter. "You're a bloody alien, and you meddle."

"Yes," said the Doctor simply. "I do."

"You never, ever, ever seem to face the consequences of your meddling," said Peter. "I think it's high time you did."

Alec saw the thing he was holding, and it looked a lot like a gun.

"Doctor!" he squeaked, and he jumped to push him out of the way, and several things happened at once.

Mum, Dad, and Johnny vanished in a crackle of lightening, one of them shrieked (or it might have been Alec), the universe around them fizzed, the Doctor and Alec hit the floor-

"Get your friends out of this one, hero," said Peter, and he vanished too.

The Doctor got up, slowly. He was covered in mud now, and clutching Alec to him.

"Peter! Come back! This isn't how it works!" He was shouting to no-one. "Those people did _nothing _to you!"

No answer came back, and the Doctor got to his feet.

"You're definately your father's son," he said, staring admiringly at Alec. Then he snapped into a cross expression. "Now tell me why you did that?"

"Um," said Alec. "I don't know. I thought you were going to die."

"Don't ever, ever do that again," the Doctor said sternly. "I'm very old. You're very young. Don't do it."

Alec nodded, anxiety churning in his stomach.

"Where are Mum and Dad and Johnny?"

The Doctor didn't answer, just looked around. He ran to the back of the garden, nearest the house, poked around in the grass, and just before Alec was about to speak he said thoughtfully. "Now, that thing Peter had looked like a vortex maniplulator. That's how he got out of here, but how did he transport your family? Alec Pond! Look in the grass!"

Alec felt sick, he knew whatever was happening was _bad_, but he knelt down and started looking.

"Mum and Dad told lots of good stories," he said, running through the day's life-changing events in his head. "but I... it would have been too _weird _for you to actually be real. I mean, when I grew up, you were sort of like Santa or something..."

"Well, he's real too," the Doctor said.

"Or that man in the stories Mum and Dad told, the Lone Centurion..."

The Doctor gave Alec a very odd look.

"Anyway," said Alec, choosing to ignore it, "I liked all the stories but I didn't want them to happen to me, not really. Can you understand? Doctor?" And he trod on something.

The Doctor hurried over to see what it was. He lifted Alec's foot and from under it pulled out what seemed to be a black plastic stick.

"Aha! An isomorphic device!"

"A what?" Alec asked. He suddenly realised he was very tired. And surely it was a school day tomorrow?

"Peter must have put this in your garden to record your...well, your signals, I suppose, your psychic blueprint. That way he connected his vortex manipulator to your family's individual conscious waves and... zap! He got them. Kidnapped them."

"What?" asked Alec, hearing only a jumble of long words.

"He took your family away," the Doctor said, "but we're going to get them back."

Something occured to Alec that he felt should have occured to him before. "Why didn't he get me?"

"Probably because you were touching me at the time."

Alec really wanted to cry, but he knew he couldn't. He was panicking to think of where his family had ended up, he knew it was nowhere good. But they couldn't die, could they? His clever mother, his compassionate father, his brother who wasn't even ten years old yet, they couldn't die!

"Hey, hey," the Doctor said, seeing his face. "You cry if you want to." But Alec found he couldn't, not in front of this storybook figure, not when he was pretty sure he was going to have to be the hero now.

"We have to go get them!" he said, sniffing just a little.

"And we will," the Doctor said. He took the sonic screwdriver from his pocket - that thing that had also featured in so many stories, doubling up as a magic wand - and ran it up and down the little plastic stick. Then he grabbed Alec's hand and they ran back to the TARDIS.

"Come on, Alec, you'll be back with your family in time for pudding!" the Doctor said as they burst through the doors. He ran to the console, and stopped. And sighed.

A note had been pinned to the console. It was printed in large letters, and looked like it had been written some time in advance. The Doctor handed it to Alec to read.

_Doctor- At this point I'll have taken away your friends, and their children. It was dead hard to choose which ones, it's funny but quite a few of your travelling companions went on to have families. I thought about one of the Jones clans but I thought I'd try someone more recent. So have fun finding and not saving the Ponds._

_If you're wondering how I knew how to lock down the TARDIS controls and where the manipulator came from, I've been poking around and spying and searching until I found that woman you talked about once, that River. I caught her at a difficult time._

_This is for Angela, who I actually loved._

Alec put it down.

"Oh, River," said the Doctor, and he stared into space for just a second. Then he tried the TARDIS controls. "Definately locked down. Oh... no."

"Doctor?" Alec spoke up worriedly.

"There's still a way! There's always a way."

One of the many screens around the console flickered.

"Doctor!" announced the voice of Peter. "Come and have a look."

The Doctor and Alec ran to the screen. Peter was staring out at them, and there was smoke and fire just visible behind him, and a cage.

"What have you done?" the Doctor demanded, but Alec was far too scared to speak.

"Don't worry, they're still alive," Peter said snidely, and then looked at Alec. "Why didn't it work on you?"

"Not important right now," the Doctor said. "Peter, you don't really want to do this. Listen to me. Amy and Rory and Johnny- who is _nine years old_- are total innocents. They're not responsible for anything I did, understand? If you lay one finger on any of them..."

"You'll do what?" snarled Peter. "You don't know what it's like, losing someone like that! You don't know how it eats at you, how it drives you insane, how you'd do _anything _just to feel a little bit better about it all!"

"Yes I do," the Doctor said.

"Oh, whatever," sneered Peter, and then he looked at Alec. "Kid? I'm sorry about this, actually. You _should _have died alongside your family. But now you're going to watch them die instead. And I bet if you thought about it, you'd much rather just die than be the last one left." And he flashed out of visibility again.

Alec couldn't help but whimper. The scene on camera changed to the cage, and there was Mum, and Dad holding Johnny...

"_Alec_!" Mum screamed into the camera. She was panicking, panicking badly, he had never seen her like that, and he was going to be sick. "Alec, I can't say goodbye, I'll never say goodbye!" And tears were pouring down her face. "Doctor, the whole planet's going to explode!"

"Amelia!" barked the Doctor. "Amy Pond, no-one is dying today! Not you, not me, not any of us! What did Peter say to you?"

"That the planet will explode in ten minutes!" Mum shouted back, swiping at her face. "And the ground's shaking, and there's smoke, and I know what an exploding planet looks like _and my youngest son is here_!"

The Doctor was thinking, moving around, but Alec couldn't move.

"Alec!" shouted Dad, and Johnny was crying, "Alec, we love you!"

"_Don't do that_!" screamed Mum. "No-one start talking that way!"

And then Alec started hyperventalating, and then everything tilted to the side and the floor hit him in the face and the whole world went black.


	7. Parents Go First

**The Children's Story**  
_6. Parents Go First_

When Alec came round the screen was off, a phone was ringing, and the Doctor had hurled water at his face.

"They're dead!" Alec gasped.

"No, they're not," the Doctor said, and pulled him to his feet. "Eight more minutes. You fainted, and I'm so so sorry, but you've gotta stay alert now." And he handed Alec a phone.

"What-"

"We need a transmat! And other things, but you're on transmat duty! Call the number for a Miss Smith, speak to her or her robot dog or whoever's there, tell them we need a transmat and we need it now! Tell them to put the transmat on another transmat and send it to the phone's co-ordinates! Got it?"

"Put the transmat on another transmat," said Alec dizzily, and at that moment he knew he was nothing like his parents, not companion material. "What are we doing?"

"Well, I sort of have an army of good people," said the Doctor. "Not just your parents, other wonders. Go! Call!"

Alec raised the phone, it was a pretty modern one with a standard video link, and found the number. Still breathing heavily, he waited while it rang. Then the ringing stopped and a pretty Indian woman appeared on screen.

"Hello?"

"Are you Miss Smith?"

"No, I'll call her- are you alright?"

"No," said Alec.

A second woman, older with grey hair, came into view.

"My goodness!" she said. "Are you alright? How're you in the TARDIS? Is the Doctor there?"

"It's my parents and my brother," said Alec, trying very hard not to burst into tears. "The Doctor needs a- a transmat- they're trapped, they might die!"

The younger woman rose from her sitting position and hurried away. The older one backed away slightly from the camera, and Alec saw she was in a wheelchair.

"Gracious, it's Alec Pond!" she said. "The red hair, the eyes! You were just a baby when I saw you last..."

"What?"

"Many years ago, my dear! You won't remember me, but your mum and dad will. Sarah Jane Smith."

"It's-it's nice to meet you," Alec stammered.

In the background the Doctor was talking into another phone, yelling something about a tribophysical waveform macro-kinetic extrapolator.

The young woman came back.

"K-9 has it, he's locked on, we're sending it now!"

"A robot dog?" Alec asked, bewildered. Behind him something hit the ground with a loud clang.

"There you go!" said Sarah Jane Smith. "I'll cut transmission now, and trust me, Alec Pond, you will be fine. Tell me when you save them." And the screen went blank.

The Doctor snatched the phone from Alec.

"Nice work! Very nice work. And here's something from Torchwood..." A pile of complicated-looking equipment clattered into being. "Right! Stand to one side, Alec, we're bringing them home!"

And he picked up the screwdriver and started fixing wires, moving like a blur.

"Alec!" he said. "Hand me the transmat-"

It was at that second that the door opened. Alec thought it was Peter back again to wreak more havoc, but it wasn't him, it was a woman-

Aunt Sharon.

"Oh my god," she said.

"Oh no," said Alec.

"Sharon Mason!" said the Doctor, barely missing a beat. "You're just in time to save your niece. Hold this wire!"

"What?" she screamed.

"Wire! Hold! Now!"

She took the wire and stood there gobsmacked.

"You! You're not real! You're _fake_!"

"No, I'm pretty sure I'm real," said the Doctor, racing round the console. "Your niece, her husband and her youngest son are in very grave danger. If you want to see them again you do exactly as I tell you, understand?"

Aunt Sharon managed a "Yes."

"Right! Good!" The Doctor hit a button on something and a streak of lightening shot up the console.

"What if this doesn't work?" Alec asked, raising his voice over all the noise.

"Then I'll rip open the heart of the TARDIS! Solves all problems if you don't mind dying! Now, Alec, Sharon, stand back!"

Obviously terrified, Sharon took Alec's hand and moved him away. Alec couldn't blame her for her terror; he was shaking himself. Then he noticed what he hadn't before- clutched in Sharon's left hand was Mum's diary.

"You came here to steal the diary!" he said, and actually backed away from her in horror. "You-" He wanted to say an awful word, but it died on his lips. "You _cow_!"

"Alec!" she snapped.

"Why would you do that?"

"Because my life doesn't make sense!" she said. "Because I raised my niece after losing my sister, but I _didn't_! Because I took care of that difficult child, but I _didn't_! Because I neglected her and left her to go mad on her own, but I _didn't_!"

One of the screens came on and there was Mum, and suddenly Alec was focusing on nothing but her. "Mum! Mum, is everyone okay?"

"We're all okay!" she shouted. And behind her, next to Dad and Johnny, a transmat clattered to the ground. "Doctor! What do we do?"

"Get on the transmat!" the Doctor shouted. "All three of you! Hold hands!"

Even as the Doctor spoke Dad clutched Johnny to him, grabbed Mum's hand- and just before their feet hit the transmat there was an explosion of lightning from somewhere, a flicker of light with a human's form-

"Peter!" shouted the Doctor. "No!"

But the damage was done. And Alec thought, _so close_, and he jammed shut his eyes and thought he might faint again-

"I'm not done yet!" shouted the Doctor, running his sonic screwdriver up and down another screen. "Amy! Rory! The transmat is still working, at one-third capacity! One of you can still use it!" And Alec opened his eyes, maybe all wasn't lost after all. "Quick! Amy! Which one of you is coming back?"

"ARE YOU AN IDIOT?" Mum roared. "JOHNNY, OF COURSE!"

Dad was placing Johnny carefully on the transmat. He kissed his forehead, and Johnny flickered off the screen- and landed in the TARDIS, next to Alec.

"Oh my god!" Aunt Sharon cried, but Alec was too stunned and too relieved to say anything. He knelt down next to his sobbing baby brother. Johnny's face was blackened from the smoke, and his trousers were wet.

"Mummy!" he was crying. "Mummy and Daddy are still there!"

"We'll save them!" Alec said, but his words were drowned out by an echoing voice.

"Doctor! Glad you saved the little boy. I don't like killing children, I'm no monster. But I'll let you and them see their parents die. What creature in the world would ever trust you now, a man who tears loved ones apart?"

"Who is that?" screamed Sharon.

"Now correct me if I'm wrong," the Doctor yelled at the ceiling, "but it seems to be you doing the tearing apart, Peter my boy."

There was no answer, except Mum screaming from the screen.

"Doctor! Listen to us!" And when he turned around her face softened. "It doesn't matter anymore. The children are safe." Dad appeared on screen too, and Mum leaned against him, their hands entwined. "It's okay. Really. No more risking of lives. There's two minutes left and there's no time for a new plan, and that man won't rest until _somebody _dies. It's over now, and we just want to say goodbye. Give us those last two minutes to let us talk to our children."

The Doctor said nothing.

"Doctor," said Dad, "just step away, just for a moment."

The Doctor did, and he took Aunt Sharon by the shoulders to lead her away too.

"Sharon!" Mum called suddenly. "I don't know why you're here, but you're the adult, this is on you. Sort things out. The will, the house, the boys' education, everything."

Sharon nodded mutely, afraid.

"Alec, Johnny," Dad said, as the Doctor lead Sharon away, down the corridor, "we're so sorry."

"Don't go!" Alec screamed. "This isn't fair!"

"But it is fair," Dad said. "It's the way things are, parents go first, for a parent to lose a child is one of the worst things in the world. And we love you, both of you, more than anything else that ever was."

"_I don't want you to go_!" was all Alec could say, while Johnny sobbed beside him.

"We know," Mum whispered. "And we wish we could stay. We don't want you to grow up like I once grew up, but there's two minutes left, no plan, no time...Alec, Johnny..."

"No!" Alec said. "No, there'll be a way, there's always a way!"

"We're sorry," said Dad.

"We love you," said Mum.

"_No_!"

He was so blinded by grief and fear that he didn't see the Doctor burst into the room, didn't realise anyone had joined him until he was pushed aside.

"Amy! Rory! Listen!" the Doctor shouted into the screen, and Alec was still unable to move and just held Johnny. "There's still enough energy in the transmat! I checked on my secondary console, I can save one of you!" Alec choked on his tears, and the Doctor swung around to look at him and then back to the screen. "I have to save one of you!"

"Don't make us choose, we can't choose!" Alec found himself roaring. And Aunt Sharon came hurrying in from the corridor, calling "Amelia! Amy! Get on the transmat, Amy!"

On screen Mum and Dad shared a long, long look.

"They can't grow up as orphans, Rory, not if there's another way," said Mum quietly.

"Amy-" said Dad, and he moved towards her, to push her to the transmat, but she was faster. She pushed him, he fell, he vanished, and then he crashed to the TARDIS floor. He just sat there, gasping, seemingly unable to grasp quite what had happened, even as Johnny ran to him.

"Rory!" screeched Sharon. "Why the hell didn't you make her get on?"

Dad ignored her, and pulled himself to his feet, hugging the boys even though he was crying. He turned to face the screen, they all did, and it wasn't just Mum standing there. Peter was behind her.

"Boys-" Mum started to say, but then Peter grabbed her, hit his wrist and blipped them both out of the world. There was flickering, then the screen went blank.

"_Where's he taken her_?" sobbed Johnny. It was the first thing he'd said for ages.

"No!" Dad yelled, and he ran forward and actually pounded on the screen. He whipped around to face the Doctor. "What's he done! Where's he gone? _Did he save her_?"

The Doctor began to speak, but then the booming voice from the ceiling, Peter's voice, spoke over him.

"Right! Getting bored now, bored with all this saving! I've got the girl- your friend, his wife, their mother! And I heard her goodbye, I heard the children sobbing, and unlike you I love second chances! So here's the deal- offer up someone who means even more than she does. Offer up _River_, and she goes free."

"What?" said the Doctor.

"River! Your wife. That invincible woman! I met her, remember? I met her before she loved you, but she _will_. And she's your girl, out of all the girls in the world. Not dead, not left, not lost. River. River dies and Amy lives."

The Doctor laughed- a hollow laugh, but a laugh nonetheless.

"You think _you _could ever kill _River_?"

"I can try," said Peter. And his echoing voice made it sound like the TARDIS itself was talking. "Now, Doctor, here's your transmat-" Something clattered to the ground. "It's set to my co-ordinates. Get your person, River or another, to stand before me. If I'm satisfied with your choice, they will step on the transmat and leave you, but Amy will return. And if _you _step on it, Doctor, if you come to save her, I kill her the second you land. This won't end until someone dies, until you feel what I feel. And I _will_ kill Amy, unless I get another. River! Or a child, if you have a child, my Angela said you were a father."

Alec took one look at the Doctor's eyes and knew that any children he had were dead.

"And River," came the voice. "I want her dead, because one day she will be just like you."

Then there were no more words, but something flickered on the screen. A number, and beneath it were the words _CALL IN TEN MINUTES, MAKE A SACRIFICE, OR SHE DIES._

_GIVE ME YOUR WIFE, AND I'LL FREE THEIR MOTHER._


	8. Someone Of Mine

**The Children's Story**  
_7. Someone Of Mine_

Alec realised that River, the Doctor's wife, the most powerful woman in the galaxy, had never seemed quite real either. How could she? She had been in the stories, but there were no photographs of her. And the idea of sacrificing a woman who wasn't real...

Well, he could never do that, because she _was _real, as real as the Doctor was, surely.

"Doctor, what do we do?" Dad asked, breathing heavily, panicking.

"Well, River..." the Doctor said, and trailed off. "She can't die, not here, not now. Her death is set in time. Unchangable. Probably."

"What are you saying?" Dad asked. Aunt Sharon was sitting off to the side, her face a mask of horror, not joining in. "Doctor, we can't sacrifice anyone, but we can't let Amy die! What do we do? What do _I _do?"

The Doctor said nothing.

"Doctor," Dad said, and he was crying, "tell me we're going to save her." Something in him seemed to be cracking. "Doctor, THIS IS MY FAMILY! WE WERE WHOLE AND COMPLETE, AND THEN YOU CAME AND-"

"I know," said the Doctor. "I know."

That made Dad lower his voice, but just a bit. "That man had a point when he said you meddled! You get into people, you make them heroes and something, somewhere _kills them_! And Amy pushed me onto that transmat-"

"Rory Williams-Pond!" the Doctor shouted back, suddenly snapping back into action. "_Do you love your wife_?"

"YES!" Dad shouted back, and Alec just let them get on with it, he suspected they needed to.

"Did you always love her, even when she hurt you?"

"YES!"

"Did you wait two thousand years guarding her lifeless form as she slept in a prison box?" And the Doctor looked at Alec.

"YES!" roared Dad, and Alec gawped.

"Did you drag that girl in that box out of fires and out of floods, risking your own life and not minding?"

"YES!"

"THAT IS WHY SHE PUSHED YOU!" the Doctor shouted back. "She won't die! No-one will! Everybody SHUT UP!"

Aunt Sharon finally snapped and ran for the door. She dropped the diary as she lunged away, and it hit the ground. The Doctor clicked his fingers to lock the TARDIS.

"Sorry, Sharon, none of us are going anywhere."

Alec left his dad's arms, ran forward and grabbed the diary. And then ran back to his dad, his head still reeling from the most recent revelation.

"Let me out!" Sharon screamed. "This is- this is kidnapping!"

"Yeah, I do that," the Doctor said. "Sharon! If you ever cared about your niece- and you once left her alone in a big house on a dark night- you'll stay right here and help us save her!"

Sharon opened her mouth, closed it, and sank to the ground with her back against the doors. For a minute Alec thought she was going to scream and shout, but she spoke softly instead.

"Once," she said. "I left her alone there once."

"The night I arrived, the night I met her. Funny," said the Doctor, "but it could be said that the reason we're all here is that you left her alone there, just once."

The screen beeped. _HURRY UP, DECIDE, _it said.

"Right," Dad said fiercely. "I'll go, he can have me-"

"NO!" screamed Johnny. He was too young to really grasp the situation, Alec knew, he was just clinging desperately to the parent who was there. "NO! NO! NO!"

"I won't go," said Dad, clinging back. "No, no, I won't, for you..."

It was then that Alec had an idea, a reckless and stupid idea.

He looked down at the diary, he looked at his dad and his brother- and forcing himself not to think, he walked up to the Doctor. As Dad tried to comfort Johnny, Alec whispered in the Doctor's ear.

"Oh," said the Doctor.

"Get Dad and Johnny out of here," Alec whispered.

Dad looked up. "Alec! What are you-"

The Doctor seemed to make a split decision. "Rory! Johnny!" he said, turning around. "Sharon! I need you to go down the corridor, split up, and look in the two rooms down there! Find me a keyboard, wires, a skateboard, a pair of glasses and a clock! Alec, stay here and help me! Go! _Go_!"

"What are we doing?" Dad shouted, getting to his feet.

"We're going to save your wife! Go!"

Two of them tore down the corridor, but Aunt Sharon remained, sitting where she was, barely registering them at all.

"_Once_," she said.

The Doctor sighed, opened a panel on the console and took out a cup of tea. He handed it to her. Aunt Sharon looked at him like he had two heads.

"What's this?"

"Tea. For you. You need something to calm you down, I reckon."

"Is it poisoned?"

"Don't be stupid! What do you think I am?"

"I saw what you are," Aunt Sharon said. "In your mind, all that time ago. I saw whole worlds falling down, I saw the universe reborn, I saw children you lost and people you loved dying! I saw more than Amy ever saw, didn't I?"

"Maybe," said the Doctor, and turned back to Alec.

"I won't let you get hurt. I know how I can end this. Don't worry."

Alec just swallowed and looked to the ceiling. "Peter?"

"Peter!" the Doctor yelled. "I have him!"

"Have who?" came the voice from the ceiling.

"Someone of mine," the Doctor said.

"I'm his son," said Alec. "I'm Amy and the Doctor's son."


	9. The Thing That Takes Children

**The Children's Story**  
_8. The Thing That Takes Children_

Aunt Sharon put her mug of tea on the ground.

"Your child!" she said in awe. "Oh, Alec, what are you? What has Amy done? What have _I _done?"

"Um, _you _didn't really do anything," Alec said. "You just left Mum alone one night, all this other stuff is ours."

There was the sound of feet pounding down the corridor. Alec should have known Dad would twig something was up. And he- his dad who'd stayed alive for two thousand years!- was coming to save him, and Alec had no plan.

"His son!" Peter said, flickering into being on the screen.

"Why do you think the teleport didn't work on him?" the Doctor said. "He's half Time Lord."

"It's in this diary," Alec said, and with trembling hands he held the relevant pages up to the screen. "My mum had a...a fling with the Doctor before she married Dad. They raised me like a normal person but I'm half Time Lord, I'm the Doctor's."

Dad reached the console room, and heard the last few words, and uttered a horrible cry. Alec couldn't tell what it was- fear, or betrayal? Did he _believe_-?

Peter on the monitor grinned.

"Her hair, and thousand-year-old eyes. I see it. Child, you're a brave one, come and join me!"

"NO!" screamed Dad, but before he could reach Alec somebody else did.

Aunt Sharon.

She ran forward, shoved Alec, vanished. As he hit the ground Alec saw her face, horror and confusion and a weird sort of pride- but then Dad reached him, crying, a mess, hugging and shouting all at once.

"You stupid boy, you stupid, stupid boy! Don't do that again! Alec! _Don't ever_-"

Johnny let out a wail and joined in. "_Alec you idiot!_"

"I'm sorry, alright?" Alec said, "And Dad, I'm not-"

But he saw the way Dad was glaring at the Doctor.

"Rory, Alec isn't my son," the Doctor said.

"I know that!" Dad shouted. And he used a very bad word before saying, "You _let him do that_! You let him-!"

"What about Sharon?" Alec yelled over him.

"Did you know she'd do that?" Dad said, even louder.

"I had an inkling, yes." The Doctor leaned against the console. "People tend to. Do things."

There was a flash of light and Peter, Mum and Aunt Sharon appeared. Peter shoved the two women to the floor.

There was confusion all around, and Alec thought his mother might be yelling at him, screaming that he'd stupidly risked his life, but then Peter cut them all off.

"Who is _this_?" he said, poking Aunt Sharon with his foot.

"My aunt," yelled Mum. "You're a monster, you're a _thing, _you tried to take my children!" And even though she was talking to Peter, Alec saw Aunt Sharon flinch.

Peter ignored her and walked to Alec.

"The Doctor's son."

"No!" said Dad.

"Yes," said Alec.

"Don't get too close to him!" the Doctor called, and Alec could tell by the tone of his voice that he had a plan. "There's something I may have forgotten to mention, Peter."

"And what's that?" he snarled.

"Funny things happen when human and Time Lord combine," the Doctor said. "A human brain, with Time Lord stuff in it, that's a powerful bit of equipment. A weapon, some might say." And he was looking straight at Aunt Sharon. "Now, if you touch Alec, he might be able to, say, put the Time Lord-ness that's in him into you. And that would be frightening. And that would _hurt_. All those memories, all those deaths. And, let's not forget, power like that can change you. Change a man who tried to kill a nine-year-old boy."

Alec's family were in a huddle on the ground, Peter standing over them. Alec noticed Johnny looking at the Doctor, no awe in his eyes, only fear, and Dad holding Mum...

And back to Peter.

"The thing that takes children," the Doctor said, and his eyes burned, " now that's what monsters do."

Alec understood at the same time Aunt Sharon did. She ran forward, and before anyone could move, or speak, she'd pressed her hands against Peter's face, just like the Doctor had done to her that night long ago before Alec was born. Peter stared up at her, in total amazement.

"No..." he said. "No, what're you doing...?"

Aunt Sharon said nothing.

"No! No, stop!"

The lights in the TARDIS flickered, Peter was being forced to his knees...

"_Angela_!" he screeched, and collapsed onto the floor.

Silence.

"He's dead!" squealed Johnny, in either fear or truimph, Alec couldn't tell.

"He isn't," the Doctor said. And he knelt down and put his hands on his head. "But he's knocked out. Well done, Sharon." And he stood up and hugged her. Sharon's face was unreadable, but she did hug back. "You're brilliant! And _I'm_ brilliant!" he continued, letting go. "You see-"

But then Dad punched him in the face.

The Doctor staggered backwards against the console. "Okay. I deserved that-" He held up his hands in surrender. "This is becoming a habit. I'm sorry I let Alec risk his life-" But he didn't get to finish that sentence either, because Mum kicked him hard in the shins.

"Ow! Ow! _Ow_!"

"Don't _ever _do that again!" Mum shouted. "Alec did something stupid, and you let him!"

"I don't care what you thought would happen with Sharon!" Dad yelled. "People have died around you! I was there! I was one of them! You _stupid_-" And the swear words were back.

"Doctor!" said Sharon.

They all turned to look at her, Mum and Dad still with fury written on their faces.

"What happened?" she asked. "I was...things are hazy...I was you!" And she clapped a hand over her mouth. "I saw what was in that man's mind! I...I fixed it!"

"Yes, you did," the Doctor said.

"But...what else happened? I felt so...scared I barely noticed."

"Well," the Doctor said, "first I'd better make _absolutely clear _that Alec isn't my son-"

"Yeah, we did know that," Mum said. And she shot a look at Dad. "You didn't buy that for a second, did you? _Did _you?"

"'Course I bloody didn't," Dad said.

"But," said the Doctor, sitting down and rubbing his face, "that night you looked into my mind, Sharon- still a stupid thing for anyone to do, by the way, I believe River's the only one who could get away with it- you got a bit of me in your head. Not much. Not enough to truly damage you. But enough to change a mind, enough to stop a killer. And you're human, you're clever, I knew you'd work it out."

Aunt Sharon looked down at the still form of Peter.

"What will you do with him?"

"UNIT will deal with him," the Doctor said. "Of course, we need to unlock the TARDIS first." He rummaged in Peter's pockets, pulled out some bits and pieces, and got to work.

Alec's family stared at each other.

"Thank you, Sharon," Mum said finally.

"S'okay," she said.

"And thank you, Alec," Johnny said. "You tried to save Mum and Dad."

Alec felt too tired to say anything, so he just hugged him. Aunt Sharon looked around the TARDIS with true wonder in her eyes.

"You spoke of it all the time. I never believed it." In the background the Doctor raised Peter's hand to touch the console and it stirred into life. "I still almost don't believe it..."

"It gets everyone like that," Dad said.

"Everybody!" the Doctor called. "Hang on-"

Sharon and Alec and Johnny clung to the sides, but Mum and Dad came forward to help the Doctor fly. Alec watched them moving, pressing buttons, perfectly in tune, and despite the fear and terror of the past hour he couldn't help but smile.

The console stopped moving and the TARDIS came to a halt. The Doctor came forward and picked up Peter. He carried the body to the door, and opened it to the sound of a yell of delight. Several yells.

"Blimey! Good to see you all!" the Doctor called out. "Malcolm! Lovely to run into you again! And Benton, good lord! Captain Magambo! Still fighting the good fight? This man isn't dead, I should probably mention. Santiago! How's your gran? But he is your prisoner now, and I need you to make sure he harms no-one else and gets back to whoever he once was. Barclay, Nathan! Excellent to see you! Terry! Wait, I don't know a Terry. Well, have a hug anyway!"

Alec and everyone else moved towards the door, and saw the Doctor running up and down shaking hands. Alec leaned against his parents. Mum held him tighly and kissed his forehead.

"Well, now you boys have met him," she said.

* * *

They all stood in the front garden.

"I'm not great at goodbyes," the Doctor said.

"Yeah, I gathered that by now," Mum said, and she gave him a peck on the cheek. "Goodbye, Doctor. Visit us again when we're old and grey."

The Doctor nodded, and opened his mouth and then closed it again.

"I know you have a lot of things to say," Mum said. "Some of them are apologies, right?"

"Oh yeah," said the Doctor. "Oh, _yeah_. I forget, about children, about parents..."

Dad sighed. "For what it's worth, I still trust you with my life."

"But not with your children," the Doctor said.

"No," Mum and Dad said together.

"And I agree," the Doctor said seriously. He turned to Alec. "Alec Pond! You're a brave one. Like your parents." He gave him a hug. "Now go and grow up! Draw, watch TV, skip classes, make friends, make a fool of yourself!" He swept him up in his arms. "Grow older, snog people, marry people! And watch out for the blue box, I love weddings, was remembered back to life at one. Best day of my life! Well, maybe, lots of days compete for that honour. But it's in the top ten!" And he spun Alec around and put him down. "This one's in the top ten too." And he turned to Johnny.

"Little Johnny, named after John Smith, named after me!" He shot a look at the others for comfirmation. "Oh, you've got a good life ahead of you, I know that. Wanna know how I know?"

"How do you know?" Johnny asked in wonder.

"The Fairytale Foundation, your mum's charity! Many years from now, when you're a grown man, you run it and you do so much good! You hire the best writers, buy the the greatest books, you fight for those who need it, you give people hope they never had! That's your future, Johnny boy, if you want it."

"I do," Johnny said, his mouth open.

"Saw it in 2072. John Pond, awesome philanthopist, being interviewed by a positively ancient Jonathan Ross, first TV presenter to gain immortality. But that's another, slightly digusting story. Anyway, when your mum told me what she did for a living I knew!" He twirled Johnny round in the air as well. "Well!"

And he looked at Aunt Sharon.

"I'm sorry for what you saw," he said to her.

"I'm sorry I looked," she said quietly.

"No, no, it's human nature, curiousity. Like Pandora's Box." And he smiled to himself. "Have a good life, Sharon Mason. Have a good life, all of you."

He gave Mum and Dad one last hug and turned to go.

"This whole thing..." Sharon said, and he turned around again at her voice, "I don't know if I'll _remember_ it, when I wake up tomorrow. It's been like a children's story..."

"Oh," the Doctor said with a smile, "I _am _a children's story."

And he walked away, opened the TARDIS doors, looked back-

"Oh, by the way, Rory, thank you, thank you so much for not growing a ponytail," he said-

-and was gone.

The engines of the TARDIS started up and Mum's red hair blew around in the wind. Leaves fluttered, trees leaned, and the outline of the time machine got thinner and thinner and finally vanished.

"Oh Sharon, you'll remember," said Mum.


	10. More Of The World

The Children's Story  
9. _More Of The World_

"We weren't his favourites," Dad said thoughtfully as they cleared away the half-eaten food, the remains of the unfinished dinner. "We could never be his favourites, it's not him, he can't have them."

"Yeah," Mum said. "He likes us all. He loves us all. And there's a hundred different kinds of good families and we've seen most of them."

Something stirred in Alec's memory. "Oh, Mum, Dad, I met Sarah Jane Smith."

"Really?" said Mum.

"Yeah. On the phone. She helped us, she sent the transmat to the TARDIS. She said to call when it was all over."

Dad picked up the nearest phone, but Aunt Sharon held out her hand.

"I'll do it," she said. "I'll...I'll introduce myself."

Dad placed the phone in her hand. "You go ahead, Aunt Sharon," he said, and watched her leave the room.

Alec piled some plates up and took a mouthful of cold lasagne. It still tasted good.

"Mum, Dad, she's not..."

"Not what?" Mum asked.

"Aunt Sharon isn't going to carry on with what she was doing."

"No," Mum said, and they saw her through the glass doors, laughing on the phone to a person she'd only just met. "Look at her."

"She's a changed person," Dad said.

Alec remembered his flash of hatred for her, and realised it had gone utterly away. Aunt Sharon had changed so completely that he had begun to wonder if the whole thing hadn't been some strange consequence of the Doctor being in her mind...

He went to the kitchen carrying plates, and Mum was right behind him so he said quietly, "Mum, I'm sorry I said I was the Doctor's kid, cos I know that that kinda meant...that I thought you cheated on Dad. Even though you didn't."

"Oh, Alec, I knew what you were doing," Mum said, hugging him. "I knew you read the diary. It's okay, I don't mind that you said it, just please, please don't risk your life like that again."

"Okay," said Alec. "And you're not crazy," he added, because he felt like he ought to.

Mum just smiled.

"Thank you, sweety."

The plates out of the way, they all sat down at the table.

"We just want to say how...grateful we are that you're alive," Mum said, blinking back tears as she held Dad's hand. "So many times today we thought...we thought our lives were over."

"And when we say lives we mean you," said Dad.

Alec found himself blinking back tears too, his only tears of the day, tears of love and exhaustion and relief. He was embarassed and hid them, but Mum saw. "Alec, sweety, let's have dessert. Why don't you grab some ice cream from the freezer?"

So he went- he heard Aunt Sharon still talking on the phone, discussing bow ties and weddings and love and monsters- and got the ice cream and five spoons, and returned to the table. Johnny had squeezed in between Mum and Dad. And the world seemed warm, and kind, and _more_.

Alec sat down with his family.

"Mum," said Johnny, breaking open the ice cream, "Dad, will we see the Doctor again?"

Mum and Dad looked at each other.

"I don't know, Johnny," Dad said.

"But I think it's likely," Mum said thoughtfully.

Johnny slurped the ice-cream from his spoon. "I want to see him. But I don't want the bad things, I don't want..." He was far away for a moment. And Alec knew he was thinking of the cage and the fire and the sheer terror that children's stories always left out.

"Oh Johnny, they come together, all that good and bad," Mum said. "In the end, you just have to count on...well, you know, you knew from the stories we told you ."

Aunt Sharon came bursting into the room. "Sarah Jane Smith is lovely, and she has a robot dog! And it talks! Come on, come and say hello!"

As they walked through to the other room where the video screen was, Alec said, "Dad, you were _immortal_. Right? You...died and then came back?"

"Yeah," Dad said. "But I'm not immortal now, Alec, I'm human."

"But you were the _Centurion_," Johnny said in awe. He gave a grin of delight at the sight of Sarah Jane, a woman he'd never met with stories of her own to tell, and ran to the middle of the room.

"Your father guarded me for two thousand years," Mum said proudly.

"I wanna hear that story," said Alec.

"And you will," said Mum.

They went through to the other room, they sat on the sofa and talked with old friends, and they all lived happily ever after. 


End file.
